Rules of the Game
by lotuskasumi
Summary: From a prompt on Tumblr: "Prompt: Clara gets into the TARDIS and the Doctor starts to take her somewhere when she mentions she has to be back for a date with Danny. The Doctor's jealousy spikes and then yeahhhhh." (Whouffle/Twelve x Clara) K for bickering and very mild suggestive content.


_Say it, that this pain is surely just an illusion.  
>Say it, that this is not like me.<br>Say it, because if you don't, I'll long for your warmth again.  
><em>- Ayumi Hamasaki, "GAME."

* * *

><p>"Undulating refractions in the Butterfly Nebula happen once in a lifetime, Clara. It would be <em>nice<em> if you could display some reverence to that fact."

"Don't be so sour; it's just one little picture. A keepsake."

The Doctor scowled, which was as good as an angry tut.

Clara frowned right back. "You said so yourself, it happens once in a lifetime," she reminded him, sliding her thumb and first finger gently across the screen of her mobile to get a better focus. "Besides, who says I'm not appreciating it?"

The Doctor pointed at the phone and at Clara's hands, forbidding, distressed. "_That _does."

"It was your idea to take me here."

"It was your idea to come!"

"Because you said it would be worth my while." Clara fixed him with a little smile, the kind that makes a dimple show, as she steadied her hand and took a picture. "And because you promised to have me back home by eight."

"It's not taking long at all; it's done. Look." He pointed to the nebula and the pale silver shower of what he said was like ice but not ice, but instead something like frozen light — though he'd never bothered to explain what _that _meant. It radiated outwards the way Clara remembered the winds of Aeolus 19 to do, only those had been golden and red, orange like flames, violet like a bruise. The crystalline winds from the Butterfly Nebula were almost gossamer, like the little arcs of multi-colored light that would stretch across her bedroom desk when the prism caught the sun.

"I _am_ looking," Clara said, and she kept her eyes on the fading, faint light for as long as it stretched out across the otherwise dark horizon, as if the nebula had wings to rival Titania's. "Why's it fading so fast?"

"Why do you need to be home at eight?" he asked.

Pretty faces may not turn Clara Oswald's head and make her speak unawares, but beauty itself often did. She watched, wide-eyed and smiling as the refractions moved in such a way as to make the nebula look like its namesake. It fluttered, massive and impossibly gentle, and Clara lost her breath and her mind both for a second before she answered. "Because I've got a date."

"Oh that's nice. Good for you, taking that step. You always seemed the type not to get back on the horse after it's thrown you off, but to get back up and shoot it for the insult."

"He's not a horse," Clara said, then, realizing what he said, and what she said first, turned to look at him with restrained panic. "What d'you mean, 'that's nice?'"

"It's nice because it's nice," he said, arms folded, leaning against the side of the doorway, watching as the nebula's "wings" began to beat slower and slower, its false flight fading. "Good for you."

"You already said that."

"Did I? Hm. Well, have another one then."

"Did you mean it?"

"Course I meant it. I said it, didn't I?"

But that's not how it always worked — and what's worse, they both knew it.

Clara pretended to care more about her phone in the silence that followed once the nebula's wings had grown still again. And the Doctor pretended he wasn't keeping an eye on that damned phone more than he cared.

"Don't go sending them that picture now," he muttered, catching Clara's expression when their eyes met. She was horrified.

"Rude to peek," she chastised him.

"Clara —"

"And I'm not sending it to anyone," she added, waving the phone in his face, close enough to smack the edge of his nose. "See? Got all riled up and grumpy for nothing."

"I am not grumpy."

"You most certainly are. You grumped — still are grumping."

"I do not."

"'I would know."

"Why, does the new one grump at you, too?"

"No, the new one's perfectly sweet, like —" Clara interrupted herself, pinning the words she meant to say to the roof of her mouth as she clamped it shut.

The Doctor could take a guess at the end of that sentence. _Like you used to be. _"Do they have a name?"

Clara folded her arms over her chest and mimicked his pose, daring herself to keep hold of his eyes. It was the only way to tell how he really felt — or it had been, in the other, older days. "He does."

"Is it a nice name?"

"A very nice name."

"That's… nice."

Clara nodded, wondering what he really wanted to ask — wondering why he wanted to ask anything at all. It'd been nearly on this very spot when he looked her in the eye and said he was going to start making up for his mistakes. _Mistakes. _How that word still cut her. How nice of him, to think fancying her was a mistake. How _nice _of him to take her at her word — _"I never thought you were!" — _instead of reading the truth on her face. _Game-player _— it would take one to know one, wouldn't it, Doctor?_  
><em>

"Do you two always go out on Wednesdays?" he asked.

"We go out whenever we can go out. Today just happened to be a Wednesday," Clara said, starting to get an idea of what was happening here. "And if he's ever late, he makes up for it twice on weekends."

"That's — well that's kind of him. Sweet. Cavity-inducingly so."

Clara offered him her most saccharine smile in return. "It's nice. Different. Reliable, you know?" And she gave him a look to suggest that no, she certainly _not _believe he knew at all what reliability meant — but she would be open to being corrected, provided he made an effort.

Finally, the Doctor straightened up and turned away from the door. "Let's get you back," he said, not looking at her as she maintained a polite distance by keeping the console between them at all times.

And back they went, with Clara hiding her frown and her decreasing certainty about what part of the game they were at now. They'd done bickering, they'd done sarcasm — but now they had a new level to work with, and a whole new set of rules needed creating and applying.

Keeping her phone in hand at all times, an odd sort of lifeline that kept her hands busy, Clara thought of phone-calls in days gone by. She thought fondly of that tinny but darling voice, that could range from confused to exhausted but loving tones. _Miss ya._ Danny could say that sometimes, too, and her heart tried not to shatter at the unintended connection she fought not to make.

The Doctor passed a hand over Clara's face and snapped his fingers against her ears, drawing her out of the deep well of her thoughts. "Go on. Get out, you've got about a minute and a half 'til eight."

"Couldn't get me back any sooner?" she snapped, already turning to race to the door.

"You've _been _back for five minutes!" he called out, his tone dark and sharp and much like the temper that Clara had building up inside her.

She glared at him as she stepped out, pulling the door over but not quite shut —

"Tomorrow."

Clara shoved the door open again. "Sorry?"

"Tomorrow. That's when I'll see you again."

They paused.

"You usually ask when you'll see me again, and I'm telling you before you can."

"Tomorrow? Tomorrow is… " Clara trailed off, taken by surprise at this sudden certainty. "_Sooner or later" _was the best she was starting to hope for, but this? An actual time frame? She was already getting impatient, and hating herself for it. "I've got plans tomorrow."

"Right, you do. With me." And he waved once, twice, before changing it to a sort of underhand dismissal. "Shut the door tight on your way out, would you mind?"

Clara slammed it hard, just as her doorbell rang. She was sure he heard him laugh.

—

_Tomorrow. _That's it, nothing more, an answer as vague as it was definite. _Tomorrow. _Well tomorrow arrived, as did the decision Clara had polished into a conviction in the middle of the night.

_I won't be waiting for him. I won't wait for him. _Gossip be damned, she'd tag along with Danny after work, get a lift home to pick up a change of clothes, then be back out again as quickly as she could. She even debated bringing them to work with her in a gym bag, but shot down the idea once she had a cup of coffee in her system. No. There really was such a thing as too keen.

And so to work she went, confidant in her decision and walking with a heavier stomp in her step, as if she could imprint the sheer force of it into the ground with every tread. _I won't wait for him. I won't wait for him. Let him wait a while instead._

–

"Substitute?"

"Yes, just for today. For mathematics. I.. thought you would have heard."

Clara stopped short as if hitting a wall. "Sorry?"

But not as sorry as she would make the Doctor – because there he was, offering his hand to her as if they were complete strangers, and what's worse he was smiling as he did it.

"John Smith, hello. English, yes?"

Clara waited until they were alone in staff room before she seized hold of the Doctor's hand and dragged him off to the little closet where they all kept their coats. The drawstring for the light hung between them as she glared with every ounce of fury she could muster up into his face, which had lost its smile and any hint of smirks and looked rather uncomfortable, as if she had a knife up to his throat instead of just her hands twisting at his collar.

"Is this how you treat every substitute? That'll get people talking."

"What are you doing here?"

"A job. Or I hope to."

Full sentences were becoming rather difficult to construct. "Here? Today?"

"Yes and yes," the Doctor said, standing very still and leaning as far back from her as the narrow space would allow.

Clara slowly uncurled her fists and tried to smooth out the wrinkles in his once faultless white shirt. He was dressed exactly as she remembered him, the same utterly forgettable yet bizarrely endearing simple suit coat and matching trousers. It was the boots that stood out the most: black, polished, far too conscious for a maths teacher, must less a substituting one.

"How'd they get your number?"

"Suppose they had it on file as an emergency contact."

"For who?"

"For situations where they needed a stand in when the original wasn't up to the test."

Clara scowled. "That's... really not what a substitute is," she said.

"Well I don't know, do I? All I did was answer a call and agree to something before I heard the end of it."

"So why did you agree to it?"

"So they'd stop talking."

Clara folded her arms and surveyed his expression quickly. He looked less terrified, but his eyebrows were at a familiar, confused slant, the sort of silent question that usually came before an insult.

"You didn't... do anything you shouldn't have, did you?"

"Recently?"

"Very recently."

"How recent?"

"Between when I saw you last and when I dragged you into this closet."

The Doctor paused to think. His mouth twisted before he answered, not entirely looking at her. "I think... I did everything I ought to have done."

"And did this involve incapacitating someone?"

"I'm sorry?"

Clara tapped her fingers against her arms, wet her lips quickly – even her throat was starting to dry up, parched and arid and full of broken, stuttering words – and took a tight, strangled breath. "It's just – the person I'm dating? The – the man? He... he works here."

The Doctor said nothing. His expression suggested this was neither interesting nor new information, but she could detect no traces of guilt in his gaze.

"Maths," she said, losing her grasp on full sentences again.

"... Yes, what about it?"

"He teaches it. The man. The dating man."

That got through to him at last. The Doctor put his hands into his pockets and considered this answer as intently as he was studying the panic on Clara's face. "You're the one who should've called in sick, are you listening to yourself? Can barely string together a sentence."

"It's not my fault!"

"It isn't?"

"No, and I think you damn well know whose fault it is." There, the full sentences were back, as was her temper, and the start of another unknowable game.

"Then you'd best take it out on him when you get together later," the Doctor said, and without waiting for Clara to respond he stepped around her and left the closet.

–

"How sick _is _sick?"

"You want the technical term or the version of it I'm currently experiencing?"

"The last one," Clara said, chewing on her nail as she hovered in the only corner of the staff room that could give her something like privacy. No one else was there, but that was bound to change – lunch hours were tricky. She'd learned that once, much to her chagrin

Danny excused himself with a groan and put the phone far away from another steady barrage of coughs. "Like death itself. Or a food allergy. One of the two. My bet's on two. Shellfish never did agree with me."

Clara pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed. "Then you should have _said_."

"I did say it. I just said it."

"Which I ought to have been told _before _I got you to finish the shrimp platter." Clara pulled at the little flap of nail that was left clinging on to the rest, determined to strip it free. "And... you're _absolutely sure _it's nothing more... sinister?" She closed her eyes tight. _Please just answer the question. Please don't ask me what that means._

"Sinister?" Danny chuckled. "Like what?"

"Like sabotage."

"Sabo – Clara are _you _feeling all right?"

"Peachy, yeah. Just fine." She turned at the sound of the door opening, and she glared at the sight of the Doctor standing there, smiling broadly, the way she'd never seen this one smile. She held on a little tighter to the phone, her hands shaking. She told herself it was only because she was cross. "I'll have to call you later."

"Interrupting something?" Danny asked, just after the Doctor did.

Clara wasn't sure which one to answer. She closed her eyes, counted back from twelve inside her head, and picked.

"Is this what you meant by tomorrow?" she asked, her eyes open again as her thumb found the button to disconnect the call that hadn't quite seen a proper, fitting end.

"What's that?"

"Yesterday. Yesterday on the TARDIS you said that I would see you tomorrow." Clara pointed at the Doctor standing as proud as he pleased in the doorway, both barring anyone else from entering and acting as a blockade to her leaving. "Well it's tomorrow and I've seen you, so you can leave."

"No."

Clara blinked. "Sorry?"

"No, not yet. There's a full day ahead of us. I've got a quiz lined up for the next hour and a whole sheet of gold stars to use."

"Then _I'm_ leaving."

"Why would you do that?"

"I got sick. Blame it on a new doctor who has no idea what the hell he's doing."

"I don't see why anyone would want to know about that."

The phone in Clara's hand let out a trill and began to vibrate. She glanced down at it – Danny again. She almost sighed, angry, until she remembered – _Danny!_

Answering it, her fingers steadier than her heart, which was going mad inside her chest, Clara held the phone up to her ear and began to turn away from the Doctor... Until he said:

"Ten minutes?"

"What?" she asked, annoyed, confused, her expression showing both emotions and more besides. "What about ten minutes?"

"I didn't say ten minutes," Danny said.

"Not you," Clara told him. "_You_. Ten minutes. What about it?"

"Clara, who are you talking to?"

"I figure ten minutes is about average for us, yes? Good enough target to take you on a little trip and have you back without anyone noticing."

Clara shook her head, willing to trade a favor with any god that cared that Danny did _not _hear that. "Doctor – " she began, but it was the wrong name again, and she was saying it to the wrong man.

"What are _you _doing with the doctor?" Danny asked, confused.

"Plotting murder," Clara said to the phone then, startled, staring at the phone as if it had eyes and all of them were glaring daggers her way: "Nothing! Nothing at all. Not... doing a thing. Not us – I mean, not me!"

The Doctor watched this all with a smile.

–

"Is this you?" Clara asked as the Doctor nudged open the door to the TARDIS with the toe of his boot.

He turned round to study her, his lips compressed into a suddenly tight line. "Sorry?"

"Is this you now – is this what you do?" Clara stood her ground, folding her arms around herself as she marveled at how suddenly spacious this coat closet had become. Big enough for him, her, the TARDIS, and all her bottomless guilt, too. "Run me round in circles and drive me half out of my mind?"

"Is that what you think I'm doing?"

She started to answer but just as before, weeks ago, when he'd caught her by surprise with coffee and a terrible, terrified plea in his eyes, Clara reconsidered her answer just as she was about to give it. It was the same now as it was then. "I... don't know."

She couldn't understand why this should hurt him. "All I'm doing is what I said I do, Clara. I said you'd see me tomorrow, and you're seeing me tomorrow. I said ten minutes was all I had to take you out, and I intend to see that one done, too. If you'd only start moving."

But Clara wouldn't. Not until she understood this new part of the game as old as the earth itself, and possibly older still: as old as the universe, as old as there were two stubborn-hearted, egomaniacs butting heads and sharing space in the other's heart(s), with neither willing to say it out loud.

One brief look shone out from his eyes for just a second, a second and no more, but it seemed to go on forever inside Clara's mind – and it was thanks to that, that she finally understood. He was looking for the very same answers she sought – and yet she was the only one who could supply the lack for them both.

_Lie to me, _those eyes were saying, _lie to me just for a little while, because we both know what the truth is, and it's bound to show itself some day._

"You're not doing this 'cause you're hurt," Clara said, talking to the look that had long disappeared from his eyes, curious to see if she could draw it out of him again. Instead he just became colder and closed off, as if she were suddenly talking to marble instead of a man. "And you're not doing it because this is who you really are – you're not jealous or spiteful or needy in any way possible."

They waited, well aware of the minutes they were losing by standing face to face in silence.

Clara found it funny how much of her guilt had vanished in the time it took to find the words for this last sentence. "And you're not doing it because you need me or want me around – and you certainly don't _love _my company."

That word had drawn him out of his stupor like a slap to the face. "Right. If you're done, I think I can get a _satisfactory _trip squeezed in to our now despairingly limited six and a half minutes," the Doctor said, but he was speaking with far too much calm to be believed.

When he held the door open for her to pass, Clara caught a glimpse of that same look in his eyes when she joined him inside. He was thanking her for the lie.

And Clara smiled once, briefly, the kind of smile that doesn't show a dimple, because she knew the next step would be how to get the Doctor to admit himself that he _was _lying – and _that _game and its rules would be entirely hers to command.

* * *

><p><strong>Notes: <strong>You guys have been so incredibly kind with every Whouffaldi fic I post~ While I don't respond to every review/message, please know that they brighten my day considerably, and I'm so honored and thrilled to have _anyone _reading these little bits at all.


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